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Sleeping beauty Bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2B

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189 points aorloff | 3 comments | 04 Jul 25 18:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.415s | source
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Synaesthesia ◴[05 Jul 25 05:50 UTC] No.44470362[source]▶
I was also around when bitcoin just started out. Many people wanted it to be a global revolution in finance.

But instead it turned into a game of "hodl" to get rich.

Scams were openly perpetrated in the forums.

I became completely disillusioned. What exactly does bitcoin offer the world today?

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sharperguy ◴[05 Jul 25 08:34 UTC] No.44471101[source]▶
Explaining bitcoin to someone who has no interest in it is like trying to explain to your mother in law that she should remove windows and switch to linux. From their perspective it just seems unneccesarry and overcomplicated.
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1. globular-toast ◴[05 Jul 25 08:45 UTC] No.44471159[source]▶
Unnecessary and overcomplicated? Compared to what? Have you ever taken out a mortgage? Ever tried to send funds overseas? Ever wondered how entire cities are built by the people who run the money?

Does your mother in law know what fractional reserve banking is? A bank run? Can they explain what happened in the 2008 financial crisis? No? They why would they need to know how Bitcoin works beyond just "trust me, it does"?

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2. sharperguy ◴[05 Jul 25 10:01 UTC] No.44471524[source]▶
It's not the how but the why. If you know you need bitcoin you know. If everything seems fine without it why would you bother?
3. FabHK ◴[05 Jul 25 11:52 UTC] No.44472115[source]▶
No mortgages or funding of productive enterprises in crypto land anyway.

I have sent money overseas, fast, cheap, securely, with fiat.

The externalities of the bad US retail banking system are enormous. First we got PayPal with Thiel and Elon, then crypto. :-/